Legislature barely approves school-funding bill

After three hours of bare-knuckle lobbying on the Senate floor, Gov. Jon Corzine's plan to boost state school aid by $532 million won final approval from lawmakers late Monday night.

The proposal won the support of only 16 of the Senate's 22 Democrats, with all six African-American senators opposing it. The final tally, prompted by a pledge to boost state aid for special education by $20 million later this year, was 21-8, with the minimum number of votes needed for passage. Eleven senators did not vote.

Earlier, the Assembly also approved it with the minimum number of "yes" votes, voting 41-36.

Corzine hailed passage of the complex bill, which he made a centerpiece of the legislative agenda he promoted during the short lame-duck session that followed November's legislative elections.

"The new law replaces a flawed system with an equitable, balanced and nonpartisan formula that addresses the needs of all students, regardless of where they live," he said in a statement. "This formula puts the needs of all children on an equal footing and will give them the educational resources they need for success."

The funding plan hung in limbo for more than three hours Monday night, as only 20 senators endorsed it when it came time for the final vote.

After a long and very public standoff, Democrats coaxed a deciding vote from Sen. Martha Bark (R-Burlington), one of 15 senators who was leaving the Senate after the session. They won her vote by agreeing to add $20 million in the upcoming state budget to supplement aid for students with autism and other special education needs.

Afterward, Sen. Barbara Buono (D-Middlesex), sponsor of the overhaul of how the state will hand out $7.8 billion to schools, said: "Today members of both parties came together on a bipartisan basis to adopt a school funding formula that is fair to every New Jersey student and looks to make sure that every child in our state receives a quality education, regardless of where they live."

Corzine's proposal is the first major change in a decade in the formula the state uses to parcel out its school aid.

The plan was designed to address an imbalance, built up after years of tight state budgets and court-ordered state aid to poor cities. More than half the state's aid was going to 31 communities, while the balance of New Jersey's 618 school districts grappled with flat funding.

Corzine's plan attempts to define the actual cost of educating students, then steers state aid to every community based on that cost. Critics contend the state's calculation of "adequacy" is flawed, as evidenced by the fact that 42 percent of school districts spend more than that amount. They say key provisions of the new formula will cost poor cities hundreds of millions of dollars.

"This formula would take us back to the early days of the 1970s," said state Sen. Wayne Bryant (D-Camden), another lawmaker whose career in the Senate was ending with the voting session. "That is not justice. That is not what we should be doing."

Even after they had cast their initial votes at 6:30 p.m., senators continued to get schooled on the finer points of the bill while it awaited one additional vote. At 7:30 p.m., 13 senators clustered on the Senate floor for an impromptu seminar on provisions in the bill regarding special education.

"This is exactly why we need this in a new session," Sen. Minority Leader Leonard Lance (R-Hunterdon) said at the time.

Opponents of the bill who ventured off the Senate floor while the "for" vote was frozen at 20 walked into the arms of a team of lobbyists from the New Jersey Education Association, the powerful teachers union, who pressed them for the one vote that would pass the measure.

"I think it's telling," Lynne Strickland, executive director of the Garden State Coalition of Schools and an opponent of the bill, said while watching key participants come and go from Corzine's office at 7:30. "When you start with something as complex as a school funding formula, you want a broad consensus. This is reflective of the fact there is no consensus."

For more than a year, Corzine has promised to overhaul the way the state hands out aid to the school districts. But he produced no information about his plan until mid-December. Particulars of the 113-page bill implementing the new formula were not published until days before Christmas, and amendments were being drafted while senators held their sole public hearing on it last week.

During two hours of debate on the measure, supporters said the proposal was a long-overdue effort to help struggling middle-income communities.

"I believe this Legislature supports a change in the way dollars are distributed," she said. "All children, in every community, will have the opportunity to succeed."

Advocates for the needy communities complained the new plan will strip hundreds of millions of dollars from Newark, Camden and other poor cities to subsidize suburban spending.

Bryant pointed to little-discussed provisions in the formula that offered only marginal aid boosts for communities with exceptionally high rates of poverty.

David Sciarra, the lead attorney in the long-running Abbott vs. Burke school funding lawsuit, which prompted the state Supreme Court rulings that steered billions of dollars in aid to 31 of the state's neediest communities, harshly criticized the new formula.

"The governor's formula is deeply divisive and fundamentally flawed," he said after the final vote. "And that is reflected in the razor-thin margin by which this passed tonight."

Republican critics pointed to provisions that require about 100 communities to return almost $50 million in new aid to their homeowners in the form of property tax relief and that decrease the amount of state aid some communities will receive for autism and other special education services, based on their local wealth.

Sen. Robert Martin (R-Morris), another departing senator who voted in favor of the measure last night, said he viewed the new formula as a step forward.

"I think the governor is onto something," he said. "The money should follow the child."

Opponents of the plan have promised to challenge its provisions in court, saying it arbitrarily ignores years of court findings that New Jersey's poorest communities did not have the local property wealth to adequately fund schools for their residents.